Majority of Head Teachers oppose tests for four year olds.

A majority of head teachers oppose controversial government plans to test four-year-olds in their first weeks atprimary school, a new study suggests.

Thousands of schools across England will pilot “reception baseline assessments” in September, and theDepartment for Education(DfE) intends to make them compulsory in 2020.

But the 20-minute tests, which will assess communication, language, literacy and mathematics skills, were denounced by head teachers as “inappropriate” and “totally unnecessary” in research carried out by staff at University College London’s Institute of Education.